US 3rd Armored Division

The US 3rd Armored Division was an armored division of the US Army that was active from 1941 to 1945 and from 1947 to 1992. The division was activated at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana on 15 April 1941 and was sent to France in June 1944, beginning combat operations in Normandy on 9 July 1944. The division suffered significant casualties at St. Lo during Operation Cobra, and it assisted the US 1st Infantry Division in breaking through at Marigny before fighting at Mayenne. By 18 August, the division had finished closing the Falaise Gap at Putanges, and it crossed the Seine on 25 August 1944 and reached Belgium on 2 September 1944. At Mons, the division cut off 40,000 Wehrmacht troops and took 8,000 prisoners, and it fired the first American field artillery shell of the war onto German soil on 10 September 1944, breaching the Siegfried Line before taking part in the Battle of Huertgen Forest. The division also fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and it bolted across the Roer River during the Central Europe Campaign of 1945. On 7 March, the division took Cologne, and the divisional commander Maurice Rose was killed in action near Paderborn on 31 March 1945. The division swept up Paderborn to shut the back door to the Ruhr Pocket, completing its encirclement. On 11 April 1945, the 3rd Armored Division liberated the Mittelbau-Dora subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nordhausen, Thuringia, and its last battle was at Dessau on 23 April 1945, capturing the city after three days of combat. The division served on occupation duty until it was deactivated on 10 November 1945. It lost 1,810 dead, 6,963 wounded, 104 missing, and 366 captured during the war. The division was reactivated in Kentucky in 1947, and it fought in the Gulf War in 1991 before being deactivated again the next year.